This
is the latest issue of "Holistic Vision". I am Floco
Tausin, author, consciousness researcher, and initiator of this
spiritual project. The focus of "Holistic Vision" lies
on entoptic phenomena, mainly on so-called eye floaters
(in ophthalmology known as vitreous floaters or by the French
term mouches volantes, see
pictures).We see these as easily floating dots
and strands in our field of vision. The close observation indicates
that there is a correspondence between altered states of consciousness
and specific appearances of floaters. Thus, the novel and provocative
main thesis of this project is: eye floaters are the first appearances
of a shining structure of consciousness within which we cover
a distance to our spiritual origin. We can see and experience
this way. As an object of concentration and meditation, these
dots and strands are therefore a significant key to our consciousness
development.

This
article summarizes the extraordinary and fascinating visual theory of
Nestor, an Emmental seer known to the author personally. The theory focuses
on the phenomenon of eye floaters, moving dots and strings in our visual
field. Being starting point, concentration object and realization
object at the same time, floaters are much more than modern ophthalmology
tries to make us believe.

…
This is a disease. I think is a little worm. This affect the brain and
the nervous system.

…
From my knowlege candida can apear in eye. Candidas don't move. The
problem is because they grow with the same structure. This is the reason
why i am in ‘panic’.”

This picture
was sent by reader X. Candidiasis or Eye Floaters?

Hi X,

Thanks for
your picture, you’re a good observer.

Well, you need
a treatment to cure an illness. Those idiopathic harmless floaters are
not an illness, so you don't need any treatment.

I'm aware of
the ‘worm’ or ‘cyst’ theories and considered
it in my newsletter: newsmarch2008.
Unfortunately, it’s German only, but to make it short: cysts or
worms look optically different (see the images there) and – contrary
to idiopathic floaters – may be seen by ophthalmologists.

The same goes
with candida: If you carefully look at the structure, floaters are clearly
different from candida: in candida, the spores are outside the threads,
there are no spores in the threads; in floaters, there are dots inside
the strings. In addition: The inside of the spores doesn't look as homogenous
as the inside of the floater dots.

If you really
had Candidiasis then your whole immune system had collapsed and you
would be in serious trouble. For candida affects all parts of the body,
not only the vitreous. This is the case in AIDS patients.

Understanding
that floaters are no illness is the first step to deal with the dots
and strings in your visual field. If you are a spiritually active person
and interested in personal growth, I suggest taking time each day to
closely observe your floaters, concentrate and meditate on them; notice
how they move, how they relate to your eye movements, how they change
size and luminosity over time. The “Holistic Vision” project
on this website may give you further ideas about how to do this.

If you don't
want to work with floaters, I suggest to accept them as an individual
expression of your body, like the color of your hair or the liver spots
on your skin – they are painless and do no harm.

Peace and
relax!

Floco

Thank
You, X,
for your report!

Dear readers,
do you have personal experiences with eye floaters or other entoptic
phenomena? Or any suggestions what they could be? Send your hints, experiences
and/or pictures to me, I am very interested.

Eye floaters
and their meaning were interpreted differently depending on the time,
culture and personality of the observer. We learn a spiritually meaningful
perspective about floaters from Nestor, the seer, with whom I have studied
and whose teachings I recorded in the book „Mouches volantes
– Eye Floaters as Shining Structure of Consciousness“.
In this category, a particular statement from the book on floaters shall
be presented and explained.

“»If I had known that your perfect
restoration would bring me these particles in the eye, I would’ve
never gotten involved in it,« I sneered.
»Don’t look at them as particles in the eye,«
he replied. »That’s the explanation of people with
a materialistic worldview. Of course they can’t come up
with anything else than ›particles in the eye‹. Instead,
con¬sider your dots and strands as an expression of consciousness.«
»Consciousness? Last time you said mouches volantes are
the basic structure of the picture.«
»That’s what they are indeed: these dots and strands
are sections of a kind of framework, or better: a structure. And
this structure is the picture without the small world, the naked
picture, so to speak – that’s why I call it basic
structure; that which we call small world comes and goes at the
outer brim of this structure.
But ultimately it is the consciousness forming this basic structure.
So if you’re familiar with it, you don’t only know
the buildup of the picture and thus the origin of all things in
your small world; you will also understand this consciousness,
that is you yourself, better.«

Nestor is giving
an insight into his thinking about the nature and structure of the world
and the cosmos: he understands creation as a series of different states
of consciousness. “Consciousness” seems to be the principle
that exists without another, self-sufficiently resting in itself. Since
our innermost being is ultimately “consciousness”, we are
the ones that unfold the cosmos in each moment. In this unfolding process,
consciousness is concentrated in a structure of spheres that are interconnected
in a network of tubes. Nestor calls it the “basic structure”.
This structure is in turn a dynamic and creative one: the light of consciousness
passing through its tubes concentrates at the edges, turning there into
condensed and isolated phenomena which we know as thoughts, feelings,
and as the bodies of animate and inanimate nature. All these phenomena
are, in their core, not different from consciousness but a condensed expression
of it.

The seers hold
that this creation process can be reversed by a particular way of life,
as well as by physical and mental exercises. What we know as “eye
floaters” are the first visual appearances of this shining basic
structure. By concentrating and meditating on this structure,
the seers seek to live and experience consciousness in its purer form.
They go the “path in the basic structure”, i.e. they increasingly
reduce the number of spheres and strings in their spiritual progression
– until they are able to see consciousness through a single sphere,
which, for them, constitutes the source of creation and also the source
of self-knowledge.

For Nestor and
the seers, these ideas about the evolution of the cosmos is a result of
seeing the shining structure. In this section, however, Nestor indirectly
says that seeing the structure is, in turn, the result of our world view.
These are our deepest beliefs about what constitutes the world and our
lives in it. If we hold the view that the phenomena of the cosmos and
life are nothing more than natural and material processes, then the ophthalmological
explanation of eye floaters will be satisfactory, and there is no reason
for us to observe these dots and strings more closely. If we, however,
consider them an expression of consciousness, then the opportunity arises
to verify the statements of the seers to ourselves.

This is perhaps
the paradox of any sort of quest for knowledge: before you can know, you
have to accept and believe. Make sure, you ask your mind and your heart
before you decide!

The
category "Quarterly Picture" introduces realistic, artistic,
and/or spiritual/religious representations from different cultures
and times which could show entoptic phenomena, or be inspired by it.

Unusual phenomena in the sky have always been impressive for mankind.
Most people in early modern Europe regarded them as a disturbance
of the divine cosmic order. They could therefore be caused only by
God himself: God was thought to put signs in the sky to warn the sinners.
At the time, such phenomena became popular motifs for the emerging
illustrated books – a business in which the German painter and
printer Hans Wolff Glaser was active. Besides Christian motifs, professionals,
portraits and war scenes, Glaser took celestial phenomena as a motif
for his woodcarvings, fabricated and printed between 1540 and 1570.
One example is the “Phenomenon in the sky at Nuremberg on April
14, 1561”.

“In
the morning between 4 and 5 am … a terrifying face appeared
in the rising sun” (translated from Old High German
by FT). This is how Glaser begins his description of the image. He
continues by listing a number of abstract geometric objects: lines,
spheres, crosses, tubes filled with spheres. They are reported to
be blue, purple, red and “blood-colored” . These objects
“started to combat each other”, moved to and fro, then
fell from the sky to the earth, turning into smoke. Finally, a large
black “spear” appeared in the sky. The spectacle lasted
for one hour and was observed by many men and women.

As we know,
such representations are no factual reports but works of art, enriched
by personal imagination and Christian symbolism. The text also had
to comply with formal requirements tailored for celestial phenomena.
Finally, the technique of woodcarving led to visual distortions, e.g.
luminous phenomena are represented as dark shadows, and delicate patterns
necessarily turn out coarser and clumsier. From today's point of view,
all of these circumstances open up a wide range of possible interpretations
of these abstract objects: meteorologists and astronomers explain
them as mirages (Fata Morgana), lighting effects (halo), turbulences
of air layers etc. UFO researchers may think of a “Close Encounter
of the First Kind”, while the Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung understood
celestial phenomena as collective archetypal visions.

What
about the “entoptic interpretation”? Entoptic
phenomena such as eye floaters may have been the cause or side effects
of the perception that led to Glaser's presentation. Geometric shapes
like the spheres and spheres in tubes are typical for the idiopathic
(harmless) eye floaters. So are the dynamics of moving to and fro
and drifting downward (“falling from the sky”). However,
eye floaters can’t be the only explanation for the fact that
this phenomenon was unique and impressive enough to the observers
to be recorded. The entoptic interpretation, therefore, needs to imply
a certain state of consciousness that not only leads to an intensified
appearance of entoptic phenomena but also to emotional arousal and
the making of meaning in the observer. With Glaser’s claim about
the collective nature of the experience in mind, this state of consciousness
may be shared among the persons involved – even if the subjective
nature of the experience does not allow for their full accordance.
In any case, Glaser was the person to determine which perceptions
(his own, those of someone else, those of several other people) were
finally depicted and printed.

If the entoptic
interpretation is correct, the investigation of early modern celestial
phenomena reveal a transition in the cultural judgment of eye floaters:
they are still religiously and spiritually significant signs –
just like they presumably were in the Upper Paleolithic (Tausin, 2006)
and in the visions of some medieval mystics (Tausin, 2007). At the
same time, against the background of an increasingly rational and
naturalistic world view, they are feared as anomalies in a (God-)given
order – a modern notion which still exists in present-day ophthalmology
(Tausin, 2009).

You will find this and other pictures in the gallery.
Do you have drawings of eye floaters or other entoptic phenomena (flying
corpuscles, afterimages etc.)? Do you know of realistic, artistic,
and religious representations of such appearances? Then send
me the picture or give me the tip; I would like to publish
it in the newsletter and/or in the gallery.

Find a
complete list with all previous publications (monographs, anthologies,
journals) on Website.
These articles are also available in the member
area.

Medicine
and religionIn the
1990s, pracitioners of orthodox scientific medicine engaged in
dialogs with much earnest and passion about the unification of
religion and medicine. It was shown that many complaints and illnesses
are soothed more easily if the patient is spiritually active.
This article is a contribution to this development. It intends
to examine the phenomenon of the migraine aura from the spiritual
view and therefore to understand migraine as a physical and spiritual
condition which corresponds to lived spirituality and, from there,
is accessible and alterable.

Migraine
or Mysticism?
Could the aura that some migraine sufferers experience prior to
an attack be evidence of an aptitude for mysticism in the sufferer?
Floco Tausin explores the spiritual dimensions of the migraine
aura.

Migraine
Aura: Suggestions for Spiritual Approaches to Migraine Headaches
the 1990s, practitioners of orthodox scientific medicine engaged
in dialogues with much passion about the reintegration of religion
into medicine. It was shown that many complaints and illnesses
are soothed more easily if the patient is spiritually active.
This article is a contribution to this development. It examines
the phenomenon of the migraine aura from a spiritual view and
proposes an understanding of migraine as a physical and spiritual
condition which corresponds to lived spirituality and, from there,
is accessible to conscious alteration.